“The Truth About Hypnosis, or …”

Hyp­no­sis is a fas­ci­nat­ing top­ic and can be used to alter con­scious­ness for mag­ick­al work. It’s pow­er­ful and it works. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most peo­ple who try it end up fail­ing. This is not because hyp­no­sis is noth­ing but a scam or a place­bo, but because they are focus­ing on the wrong thing. They’re going the wrong way.

So begins this blog entry on the Llewellyn web­site by Don­ald Michael Kraig, a board-cer­ti­fied clin­i­cal hyp­nother­a­pist and instruc­tor. I’m rec­om­mend­ing it because it lays out a num­ber of fun­da­men­tal truths about the sub­ject that often need repeating.

Far too often, the stereo­types and pre­con­cep­tions, not to men­tion the sim­ple lack of knowl­edge, about the sub­ject inter­fere with the actu­al process involved. Not just the out­ré stereo­types of sub­jects being forced to cluck like a chick­en or believ­ing that they can’t emerge from trance, but also the fin­er details of what it actu­al­ly feels like or what can hap­pen (or not hap­pen) in trance. This arti­cle by some­one who obvi­ous­ly knows what he is talk­ing about is a good intro­duc­tion to elim­i­nate these stereo­types and preconceptions.

February 28th, 2012 | Tags: | Category: Hypnosis News and Information | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)

New Year’s Resolution Scorecard — Week 08

Read­ing: I am find­ing “Incog­ni­to: the Secret Lives of the Brain” dif­fi­cult to read for any length of time, based on my activ­i­ty. Its a book that I real­ly ought to spend a cou­ple of hours just read­ing and cog­i­tat­ing about.

Research: In the cat­e­go­ry of “bet­ter late than nev­er” comes “Doc­tor Volut­pua” an NSFW web­com­ic about the com­e­dy involved with an endowed psy­chol­o­gist deal­ing in sex­u­al dif­fi­cul­ties. Alas, as soon as word about it hit the major report­ing sites, the cre­ator of the series announced that he was putting it on hiatus.

Which is rather a shame con­sid­er­ing the humor involved.

Next week is like­ly to be pret­ty busy: I record­ed five dif­fer­ent ses­sions on Sat­ur­day that will have to be edit­ed down and com­bined with oth­er ele­ments for a series of CDs. That and three oth­er events this week are all lead­ing up to busy week.

February 27th, 2012 | Category: The HiM Collection, Website Information and Maintenance | Comments are closed

“Enemy Mind” by Maggie Shayne

SUBJECT:Zach Ingram, brawny brain, aka Pro­fes­sor Ingram

FAMILY HISTORY: The Ingram heir, broth­er of finan­cial whiz Jake

DEEPEST SECRET: He’d always envied his broth­er — until now …

Pro­fes­sor Zach Ingram was believed to have clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about genet­i­cal­ly altered humans, and agents from the top secret MEDUSA want­ed it enough to kid­nap him. But was the iron-willed aca­d­e­m­ic tru­ly the one they sought? Beau­ti­ful psy­chi­a­trist Dr. Maisy Dal­ton was unwit­ting­ly brought in to hyp­no­tize the rugged­ly hand­some Zach into talk­ing about the “mem­o­ries” hid­den with­in him. But the inno­cent doc­tor could­n’t con­trol her feel­ings for the mys­te­ri­ous man who spoke of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty and some­thing called the Extra­or­di­nary Five. In her heart, Maisy knew Zach was telling the truth, and was will­ing to risk her life and love to help him unrav­el the secrets of MEDUSA and the poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous X5 …

[amtap book:isbn=0373613687]

Descrip­tion: Psy­chol­o­gist and hyp­nother­a­pist MJ (Maisey Jane) Dal­ton receives a call from a frus­trat­ed moth­er, ask­ing her to come and help her son, who had been res­cued from a cult. Maisey is an expert in cult depro­gram­ming and mem­o­ry recov­ery, and the moth­er’s plain­tive tone con­vinced her to at least go and take a look.

But when Maisey arrived at the out-of-the-way ranch house, things did­n’t seem right. The “home cooked” meal was dis­guised fast-food. The house had sup­pos­ed­ly been in use for sev­er­al decades, yet some rooms were unused and decrepit, and fur­ni­ture was far too new to fit the sto­ry. Bob, who had said that the patient was his broth­er, could­n’t describe any details of their shared childhood.

Yet the biggest mys­tery was the patient. She was told his name was Jake Ingram, but he whis­pered that his name was real­ly Zach. He was sup­posed to have been recov­er­ing from being drugged by the cult, yet he seemed worse than bet­ter. He also seemed gen­uine­ly ter­ri­fied of his sup­posed family.

At the same time, the real Jake Ingram is busy solv­ing a com­put­er theft at the World Bank. A theft that only some­one of his genius could have per­formed. But when he learns his fos­ter broth­er had dis­ap­peared, he goes in search of him.

Part of a series of romance nov­els involv­ing what is described as the “Extra­or­di­nary Five”, five prodi­gies cre­at­ed years ago by a secret orga­ni­za­tion, and now sought by mys­te­ri­ous forces. There is no com­plete res­o­lu­tion except to the kid­nap­ping and the romance between Maisy and Zach. And, there is no hyp­no­sis involved, although there is one scene where Bob tries some heavy-hand­ed mem­o­ry recov­ery tech­niques involv­ing Sodi­um Pen­tathol. How­ev­er, you would­n’t know that from the cov­er, which shows Maisy dan­gling a shin­ing pen­dant before the eyes of a slump­ing Zach.

February 26th, 2012 | Tags: , | Category: Fiction | Comments are closed

‘Never Mess With Layla Delacroix’ — Eerie Cuties

I’ve men­tioned “Eerie Cuties” in the past, but this one page is worth repeat­ing the mention.

The back­sto­ry of the page is that Chloe the Suc­cubus ‘bor­rowed’ some­thing from her moth­er which increased her suc­cubus pow­ers. As a result, she addict­ed Lay­la Delacroix, a vam­pire, to her blood and used her con­nec­tion with Lay­la’s boyfriend Dio to have din­ner with him as part of some seri­ous suc­cubus fore­play. How­ev­er, dur­ing din­ner, she made an absolute pig of her­self, fin­ish­ing with pour­ing choco­late fon­due all over herself.

And the ‘scrub brush’ is actu­al­ly an obnox­ious doll pos­sessed with the spir­it of a total per­vert, who rel­ish­es any sit­u­a­tion where ‘he’ can get close to (one of) the objects of his desires. Suf­fice to say, Lay­la is quite sat­is­fied in her revenge.

February 21st, 2012 | Tags: | Category: Comics, Comic Books, Comic Strips or Manga | Comments are closed

New Year’s Resolution Scorecard — Week 07

Five of sev­en days spent at work plus a two-hour inter­view process at a work­site 45 min­utes away meant lit­tle time for much else this week, alas.

Read­ing: Much of my rou­tine sched­ule was dis­rupt­ed this past week, leav­ing lit­tle time for read­ing, research and writ­ing. Then my lim­it­ed read­ing time was dis­tract­ed with a short sto­ry col­lec­tion that I dis­cov­ered in the world of a favorite author of mine, but which may have sparked an idea for a short sto­ry in that same world.

Research: I am fol­low­ing the cur­rent sto­ry­line in the Bleach ani­me series, fol­low­ing from the man­ga sto­ry­line, which has an inter­est­ing take on mind con­trol. The antag­o­nist appar­ent­ly has the pow­er to edit mem­o­ries of peo­ple and has insert­ed him­self into the lives of all the fam­i­ly and friends of the lead pro­tag­o­nist. I’m still not sure why the lead nor anoth­er pro­tag­o­nist have been left alone, except maybe to have fight scenes.There is also a cou­ple of oth­er pro­tag­o­nists who are also exclud­ed from the effect but whose motives and actions are unclear. I’ll write up the details when the sto­ry­line is concluded.

I am also fol­low­ing the Star Trek / Legion of Super-Heroes com­ic series: the lead antag­o­nist’s ram­pant suc­cess at con­quest is large­ly because of the real­i­ty and mind con­trol abil­i­ties of the “Macguf­fin” of the sto­ry­line. Look­ing for­ward to the final issue when the Macguf­fin gets its revenge.

February 20th, 2012 | Category: The HiM Collection, Website Information and Maintenance | Comments are closed
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